V.I.
Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy

7. A Russian “Idealist
Physicist”

Owing to certain unfortunate conditions under which I am obliged
to work, I have been almost entirely unable to acquaint myself
with the Russian literature of the subject under discussion. I
shall confine myself to an exposition of an article that has an
important bearing on my theme written by our notorious
arch-reactionary philosopher, Mr. Lopatin.
The article appeared
in the September-October issue of Problems of Philosophy and
Psychology,[1] 1907, and is entitled “An
Idealist Physicist.” A “true-Russian”
philosophical idealist, Mr. Lopatin bears the same relation to
the contemporary European idealists as, for example, the Union
of the Russian
People[2] does to the reactionary parties of
the West. All the more instructive is it, therefore, to see how
similar philosophical trends manifest themselves in totally
different cultural and social surroundings. Mr. Lopatin’s
article is, as the French say, an éloge—a
eulogy—of the Russian physicist, the late N. I. Shishkin
(died 1906). Mr. Lopatin was fascinated by the fact that this
cultured man, who was much interested in Hertz and the new
physics generally, was not only a Right-Wing Constitutional
Democrat (p. 339) but a deeply religious man, a devotee of the
philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, and so on and so
forth. However, in spite of the fact that his main line of
“endeavour” lies in the borderland between
philosophy and the police department, Mr. Lopatin has also
furnished certain material for a characterisation of the
epistemological views of
this idealist
physicist. Mr. Lopatin writes: “He was a genuine
positivist in his tireless endeavour to give the broadest
possible criticism of the methods of investigation, suppositions
and facts of science from the standpoint of their suitability as
means and material for the construction of an integral and
perfected world outlook. In this respect N. I. Shishkin was the
very antipode of many of his contemporaries. In previous
articles of mine in this periodical, I have frequently
endeavoured to explain the heterogeneous and often shaky
materials from which the so-called scientific world outlook is
made up. They include established facts, more or less bold
generalisations, hypotheses that are convenient at the given
moment for one or another field of science, and even auxiliary
scientific fictions. And all this is elevated to the dignity of
incontrovertible objective truths, from the standpoint of which
all other ideas and all other beliefs of a philosophical and
religious nature must be judged, and everything in them that is
not indicated in these truths must be rejected. Our highly
talented natural scientist and thinker, Professor
V. I. Vernadsky, has shown with exemplary clarity how shallow
and unfounded are these claims to convert the scientific views
of a given historical period into an immobile, dogmatic system
obligatory for all. And it is not only the broad reading public
that is guilty of making such a conversion
[footnote by Mr. Lopatin : “For the
broad public a number of popular books have been written, the
purpose of which is to foster the conviction that there exists
such a scientific catechism providing an answer to all
questions. Typical works of this kind are Büchner’s
Force and Matter and Haeckel’s The Riddle of
the Universe"]
and not only individual scientists in
particular branches of science; what is even more strange is
that this sin is frequently committed by the official
philosophers, all of whose efforts are at times directed only to
proving that they are saying nothing but what has been said
before them by representatives of the several sciences, and that
they are only saying it in their own language.

“N. I. Shishkin had no trace of prejudiced dogmatism. He
was a convinced champion of the mechanical explanation of the
phenomena of nature, but for him it was only a method
of
investigation . . .” (p. 341). So, so . . . a familiar
refrain! “He was far from believing that the mechanical
theory reveals the true nature of the phenomena investigated; he
regarded it only as the most convenient and fertile method of
unifying and explaining them for the purposes of science. For
him, therefore, the mechanical conception of nature and the
materialist view of nature by no means coincide.” Exactly
as in the case of the authors of the Studies
“in” the Philosophy of Marxism !
“Quite the contrary, it seemed to him that in questions of
a higher order, the mechanical theory ought to take a very
critical, even a conciliatory attitude.”

In the language of the Machians this is called “overcoming
the obsolete, narrow and one-sided” opposition between
materialism and idealism. “Questions of the first
beginning and ultimate end of things, of the inner nature of our
mind, of freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul and so
forth, cannot in their full breadth of meaning come within its
scope—since as a method of investigation it is confined
within the natural limits of its applicability solely to the
facts of physical experience” (p. 342). The last two lines
are an undoubted plagiarism from A. Bogdanov’s
Empirio-momsm.

“Light can be regarded"—wrote Shishkin in his
article “Psycho-Physical Phenomena from the Standpoint of
the Mechanical Theory” (Problems of Philosophy and
Psychology, Bk. 1, p. 127)—"as substance, as motion,
as electricity, as sensation.”

There is no doubt that Mr. Lopatin is absolutely right in
ranking Shishkin among the positivists and that this physicist
belonged body and soul to the Machian school of the new
physics. In his statement on light, Shishkin means to say that
the various methods of regarding light are various methods of
“organising experience” (in A. Bogdanov’s
terminology), all equally legitimate from different points of
view, or that they are various “connections of
elements” (in Mach’s terminology), and that, in any
case, the physicists’ theory of light is not a copy of
objective reality. But Shishkin argues very badly. “Light
can be regarded as substance, as motion. . .” he says. But
in nature there is neither substance without motion nor motion
without
substance.
Shishkin’s first
“apposition” is meaningless. . . . “As
electricity. . . .” Electricity is a movement of
substance, hence Shishkin is wrong here too. The electromagnetic
theory of light has shown that light and electricity are forms
of motion of one and the same substance (ether). “As
sensation. . . .” Sensation is an image of matter in
motion. Save through sensations, we can know nothing either of
the forms of substance or of the forms of motion; sensations are
evoked by the action of matter in motion upon our
sense-organs. That is how science views it. The sensation of red
reflects ether vibrations of a frequency of approximately 450
trillions per second. The sensation of blue reflects ether
vibrations of a frequency of approximately 620 trillions per
second. The vibrations of the ether exist independently of our
sensations of light. Our sensations of light depend on the
action of the vibrations of the ether on the human organ of
vision. Our sensations reflect objective reality, i.e.,
some thing that exists independently of humanity and of human
sensations. That is how science views it. Shishkin’s
argument against materialism is the cheapest kind of sophistry.

Notes

[1]Voprosy Filosofii i Psikhologii (Problems of Philosophy and
Psychology)—a journa1 of an idealist tendency,
founded by Professor N. Y. Grot, published in Moscow from
November 1889 to April 1918 (from 1894 it, was published by the
Moscow Psychological Society). It contained articles on
philosophy, psychology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, critical
notes and analyses of theories and works
of West-European
philosophers and psychologists, reviews of books on philosophy
and of foreign philosophical journals, and other material. In
the nineties its contributors included the “legal Marxists”
P. B. Struve and S. N. Bulgakov, and in the years of
reaction—A. Bogdanov and other Machists. From 1894 it was
edited by L. M. Lopatin.

[2]Union of the Russian People—an ultra-reactionary,
Black-Hundred organisation of the monarchists, formed in October
1905 in St. Petersburg for combating the revolutionary
movement. The Union united reactionary landlords, big house
owners, merchants, police officials, clergy, urban
petty-bourgeoisie, kulaks, and declassed and criminal
elements. It was headed by V. A. Bobrinsky, A. I. Dubrovin,
P. A. Krushevan, N. E. Markov 2nd, V. M. Purish kevich and
others. Its press organs were the newspapers Russkoye Znamya
(Russian Flag), Obyedineniye (Union), and Groza
(Storm). Branches of the Union were opened in many Russian
towns.

The Union defended the continuance of the tsarist autocracy,
the preservation of semi-feudal landlordism and the privileges of
the nobility. Its motto was the monarchist, nationalist slogan of
the feudal epoch—“orthodox religion, autocracy,
nationhood”. It chose pogroms and murder as its chief weapon
against the revolution. Helped and protected by the police, its
members openly and with impunity beat up and murdered leading
revolutionary workers and representatives of the democratic
intelligentsia, disrupted and fired on meetings, organised
anti-Jewish pogroms and viciously persecuted non-Russian
nationalities.

After the dissolution of the Second Duma, the Union split into
two organisations: the “Chamber of the Archangel Michael” headed
by Purishkevich, which advocated using the Third Duma for
counter-revolutionary aims, and the Union of the Russian People
proper, headed by Dubrovin, which continued the tactics of open
terrorism. Both of the Black-Hundred organisations were abolised
during the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of
1917. After the October Socialist Revolution, former members of
these organisations took an active part in counter-revolutionary
revolts and conspiracies against the Soviet power.